Two local games to be shown on television

High school football is back, and both teams will open the 2011 campaign at home. The South Effingham Mustangs will play host to the Jenkins Warriors, and the Effingham County Rebels will welcome the Screven County Gamecocks. Both games start at 7:30 p.m. and admission to each game is $7. Conditions at kickoff are expected to be 85 degrees and cloudy. For more on tonight’s matchups, see page 11 of today’s www.prepsports.effinghamherald.net.

Effingham County High School girls basketball coach Karl DeMasi, a former head football coach at Groves, will be part of the broadcasts featuring two local teams involved in rivalries. The games, to be shown on Universal Sports, begin Sept. 3 with Jenkins and Johnson. Effingham County schools will be featured in back-to-back weeks Sept. 16 and 23. Effingham County will meet Savannah Christian on Sept. 16 and the all-Effingham battle between Effingham County and South Effingham will take place Sept. 23.

“They got the equipment to make it live,” DeMasi said. “It should be real exciting. It should be a lot of fun.”WTKS-AM broadcast Friday night football games last year, and DeMasi and Steve Richards came up with the idea.“It went really well,” he said.

They also pressed Effingham County school board member Troy Alford into service as a guest color analyst. Alford also helped push the idea of televising local games.

“Troy had a big part of approaching CW,” DeMasi said, “and they bought the idea.”

DeMasi will serve as the color analyst, though he will miss the first two broadcasts. Bill Edwards, who has a talk show on AM1290, will be the play-by-play man. There also will be a sideline reporter.

DeMasi also hosts a sports talk show on Saturday mornings on 1290. He’s also done stadium announcing in New York and play-by-play for basketball.

As a color analyst, DeMasi said he will give viewers his thoughts what took place and what should have happened on a play.

“Hopefully, I’ll have a little experience in telling people what should have happened,” he said. “I’m not critiquing the coaches; I’m just giving them what Karl DeMasi would have done as a football coach.”

Having been a junior varsity coach at Effingham, and with his son Russell having played for Savannah Christian, DeMasi is looking forward to the two games involving the Rebels. DeMasi also went up against Savannah Christian coach Donald Chumley when DeMasi was head coach at Groves and Chumley was an assistant at Benedictine.

“I’m excited about Effingham playing Savannah Christian. I know both schools,” he said. “I coached these kids two years ago. All these kids, I had a chance to work with them. It’ll be a lot of fun to see how they’ve grown.”